People might well have had a pride in their heritage or ancestry, but that did not really mean that they thought that everyone sharing that heritage and ancestry should group themselves into one sovereign "nation".

It was generally more normal for a cultural or linguistic group to either be divided into multiple political units, or for it to be subsumed into some larger empire.

For example (from various eras in European history) the Gauls, before conquest by Julius Cesar, were divided into many different "kingdoms" or tribal polities. After Cesar, they were all subsumed into the Roman Empire. The Anglo Saxons in Britain were grouped into multiple kingdoms. The Germans in the Holy Roman Empire were fragmented into a vast number of semi independent political groupings. The various peoples of the African Mediterranean Coast and the Middle East were all subsumed into the Caliphate. Later, a vast diversity of cultural groupings were all part of the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian Empires

"Nationalism" is a relatively recent emotional and political construct in the history of Europe.